We hear all the time that we have to move fast today to gain, and maintain, a competitive advantage. So it may seem that the old saying has become outdated.

But if we move too fast, we risk making more mistakes. Now this age-old saying may not be talking about high-level mistakes, but we wondered if it could be applied in that realm. We may squander precious resources if we don’t make the right moves in the right sequence.

Speed without direction gets us nowhere fast.

It doesn’t do us any good to go fast if we don’t know where we’re trying to go. Yet we often make this mistake. In our haste, we skip a step. Instead of “Ready, Aim, Fire”, we truncate it to “Ready, Fire.”

The result? We’re in perpetual motion, but the actions we take don’t move us toward the life we want to live. We waste a lot of time but see little advancement. We get tired, frustrated, and discouraged because we feel like we’re working our butts off but still not getting anywhere.

Direction without speed is no better.

Once we’ve decided where we want to go, we do need to move fast. Because we often miss a step here too. “Ready, Aim, Aim, Aim, Aim …” doesn’t work either.

We fail to take the first step because we get scared. So we don’t get anywhere. We allow our fears to paralyze us. Then someone gets where we need to be first and we miss our bigg opportunity.

Get where you want to be when you want to be there.

Speed and direction. We often have one without the other. But to succeed bigg, we need them both congruently.

Speed to direction. We need to move quickly to determine where we want to go. While we don’t need to move as fast here as we do once our destination is determined, it’s still important not to lollygag. We only have one life to live. So we want to discover where we want to take it as quickly as possible.

Direction with speed. Once we’ve done that, we want to get there as fast as we can. GO! FAST! Now is the time to move quickly and this is where the competitive advantage comes in.

Because as we move toward our destination, we learn about the environment we’re operating in. There may be a detour we have to take. There may be road construction we can avoid. By moving quickly, we spot these things before others so we’re able to stay ahead of them.